


5 nice things Andrew doesn’t hate and 1 he thinks he does

by Aisjustrunning



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: 5+1 Things, Brief Reference to Past Abuse, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 06:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6068572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aisjustrunning/pseuds/Aisjustrunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew Minyard claims he hates lots of things (and people). He doesn't talk often about what he doesn't hate, but those things exist nonetheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 nice things Andrew doesn’t hate and 1 he thinks he does

**Author's Note:**

> This made more sense when I first had the idea. Then it started losing sense, but I thought I could as well finish it and share with the world some of my obsession with these guys.
> 
> Thanks to [Trenna](http://mywitfailsme.tumblr.com/) for the beta. She made sure my tenses were right. Even if she had no idea who these people are. Any remaining mistakes are very much my own, though.

**1\. Ice cream**

Andrew has a sweet tooth. It’s more like the only things he’ll eat are sweet. To Kevin’s distress, during his time in Palmetto State he went from ice-cream to Betsy's hot chocolate and back to ice-cream. He’ll always deny it, but Betsy's chocolate helped pave the way for their common understanding. Now it’s mostly ice-cream.

Andrew will eat the occasional sandwich, cut into small pieces. As if to minimize the taste and the effort it takes to eat something solid; something that is clearly not worth that effort. Nobody could say he enjoys eating that. Honestly, nobody could say there’s anything noticeably “joyful” in Andrew eating ice-cream either, but there’s… something in the way he clutches the tube, focuses his attention in its content, the way the spoon lingers in his mouth after he finishes the last of the ice-cream.

With time, Neil learns to see those little signs. He stares at Andrew enough to notice. Neil takes better care of his own diet, his Exy obsession making him careful of what he eats and what he doesn’t. He lets the nutritionists on his team dictate his meals. Andrew comments on it, mocking, but Neil just shrugs. He could retaliate, retort with something about Andrew’s own mess of a diet, but he knows it wouldn’t affect Andrew at all. Honestly, Neil probably would never dream of taking away anything that makes Andrew even slightly happy.

So Neil keeps on buying the most outrageously sugary ice-cream he can find, and Andrew keeps scraping tubes of the stuff clean under Neil’s gaze.

\-----

**2\. Cars**

The only time anyone asked about his car, Andrew claimed it was just a fast way of blowing the money from Tilda's life insurance. Nobody asked again, not to his face; so the story spread.

The fact is, Andrew actually likes cars. Not driving, _per se_ , just cars. Cars are fast, comfortable. There’s something satisfying in expensive flashy cars. Cars are the possibility to go wherever he wants to choose, and choice is something he’s been stripped of too often in his life.

Later on, a car also means going away from everything and everyone. Everything and everyone but Neil, their road trips taking them both around the state, sometimes further. Neil sits behind the wheel more often than not, Andrew by his side. He usually doesn’t speak for the whole ride, but he rarely dozes off now that he’s off his meds.

They check into a hotel or even park the car somewhere and stay for a night, kissing, Andrew on Neil’s lap in the reduced space of the back seat, still as hungry and intense as when their time had a deadline, Neil desperate to give Andrew everything he has without using his hands, without crossing Andrew’s lines. Andrew still checking Neil’s “yes”, refusing to believe an always from him, from anyone.

All in all, you could say that yes, Andrew likes cars.

\-----

 

**3\. Exy**

Exy is stupid.

It’s just a game, and it’s made more stupid by idiots who care too much about a ball finding or not finding the back of a net.

However, for a year and a half of his life it allowed him to be sober.

And he likes feeling sober.

Without his medicine Andrew used to feel sick, but it was better than the constant high of the meds. The drugs leaving him even more uncaring and detached, but with a forceful happy edge he hated.

Now the medication is gone for good, and he can’t say happy is a word for how he feels, but at least he’s not forced to smile.

Exy is not an excuse to be sober anymore, now it means something else. The game is still dumb, but it’s also the clash of bodies after a win. Exy is driving with Neil to practice. It's something he can use to exasperate Kevin, feigning being more uninterested than he actually is. Exy is Renee or Nicky visiting to watch them play with the US Court.

The court will never be home to him the way it became home for Neil, he will never belong in it the way Kevin does, has always done, but being there it's something he has grown to enjoy.

\-----

**4\. Sex**

Andrew did a lot of experimenting in juvie. He felt for the first time what it was like to get pleasure from another body, instead of being used for others’ pleasure. In juvie he had a say in the matter, and he had time to explore what he felt or didn’t feel, what he liked and what he didn’t like. Women were the first thing he would have put in a list under “Don’t”, had he written one, “being touched” being the second item in that list.

Guys in juvie weren’t especially nice, but he, honestly, didn’t want them to be. He didn’t need to be nice to them, either. He never took anything that wasn’t specifically and vocally given to him, but he didn’t have to treat his partners there with care.

They soon learned what he was willing to do and what he wasn’t. The first time somebody tried touching his dick, it landed Andrew in solitary confinement for breaking the guy’s arm. It didn’t happen again. Some even seemed into the restraints he learned to use after that, for people who couldn't follow directions properly.

Now sex is different. Less about discovering and testing his own limits, less picking at the scars, both physical and psychological, and more about sharing something with a body whose scars he has started to learn as well as he knows his own, as much as Neil has tried to hide them, and everything else, from him.

He likes covering Neil's body with his, the feel of Neil's muscles under him, he likes tracing the scars, the same ones he touched that first time, before Neil let anyone see his body. He likes to feel Neil's nipples hardening under his hand, hearing the sounds he pulls out of Neil.

He doesn't even hate Neil's hands on him. He hates how easy it comes to him, though. To let it happen. How he _makes_ it happen, putting Neil's hand on his chest, which for the longest time still gets him a questioning look from Neil, who keeps his hands still, not daring to move them until he is totally sure Andrew is ok with it.

There are still things he won't do, he can't do, but Neil doesn't push, and never gives in when Andrew tests him.

So as long as its on his terms, Andrew likes sex, and Neil never, not once, fails to respect those terms.

\----- 

**5\. Neil**

He thought he hated Neil. He despised his own physical interest in the guy, even though he mostly blamed the drugs for that, even if it was still there when he came back from rehab. He hated the way Neil looked at him. He hated his lies, because they made it more difficult to keep his promise of protection. He hated how Neil made him feel, after Drake, after Proust. He hated how easy he gave in to Neil's requests. He hated all the problems Neil caused him and how easily Neil seemed to be able to read him, when everybody else couldn't.

Now he knows that every time he says “I hate you”, it’s less true, and he knows Neil realizes it too. With the years, he says it less. It never turns into an “I love you”. That goes unsaid, but there are many things between them that need no saying.

He reaches a point where he can be 100% certain that he doesn't hate Neil.

\-----

**+1 The cats**

He does hate the cats, everything about them. From the dumb names Neil lets Nicky give them, to the space they occupy on the couch, how they leave cat fur on everything they touch. 

He hates the attention Neil gives them, how everybody coos about them when they visit, making stupid noises. How people ask him about the cats, as if he had to care about them. He hates waking up every time a cat jumps on the bed in the middle of the night, and waking up in the morning covered in fur. 

He hates the weight of Sir Fat Cat McCatterson when the cat jumps on his lap. He shoos it the first time, but it keeps on happening, to the point that it gets more tiring to chase the cat away than to just let it happen.

The first time he actually pets Sir, he makes sure Neil can't see what he's doing. He notices how soft the cat actually is. And it's warm and it purrs. That's nice. He does it again, the petting, always when he's sure Neil is not looking at him. Because Andrew does hate the cats, and he doesn't want Neil getting any weird ideas about it.

Okay, maybe he doesn't _completely_ hate the cats, but nobody needs to know that. He can keep on surreptitiously petting the warm balls of fluff on his lap while thinking of how much he hates everything about them.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love. Concrit is ok, as long as you're really nice about it (I'm sensitive). Thank you very much for reading! :)


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